Park Service relented despite initial rejection based on geologists' reviews.

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“Alternative facts” aren’t new. Young-Earth creationist groups like Answers in Genesis believe the Earth is no more than 6,000 years old despite actual mountains of evidence to the contrary, and they've been playing the “alternative facts” card for years. In lieu of conceding incontrovertible geological evidence, they sidestep it by saying, “Well, we just look at those facts differently.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than the Grand Canyon, which young-Earth creationist groups have long been enamored with. A long geologic record (spanning almost 2 billion years, in total) is on display in the layers of the Grand Canyon thanks to the work of the Colorado River. But many creationists instead assert that the canyon’s rocks—in addition to the spectacular erosion that reveals them—are actually the product of the Biblical “great flood” several thousand years ago.

Andrew Snelling, who got a PhD in geology before joining Answers in Genesis, continues working to interpret the canyon in a way that is consistent with his views. In 2013, he requested permission from the National Park Service to collect some rock samples in the canyon for a new project to that end. The Park Service can grant permits for collecting material, which is otherwise illegal.

Snelling wanted to collect rocks from structures in sedimentary formations known as “soft-sediment deformation”—basically, squiggly disturbances of the layering that occur long before the sediment solidifies into rock. While solid rock layers can fold (bend) on a larger scale under the right pressures, young-Earth creationists assert that all folds are soft sediment structures, since forming them doesn’t require long periods of time.

The National Park Service sent Snelling’s proposal out for review, having three academic geologists who study the canyon look at it. Those reviews were not kind. None felt the project provided any value to justify the collection. One reviewer, the University of New Mexico’s Karl Karlstrom, pointed out that examples of soft-sediment deformation can be found all over the place, so Snelling didn’t need to collect rock from a national park. In the end, Snelling didn’t get his permit.

In May, Snelling filed a lawsuit alleging that his rights had been violated, as he believed his application had been denied by a federal agency because of his religious views. The complaint cites, among other things, President Trump’s executive order on religious freedom.

That lawsuit was withdrawn by Snelling on June 28. According to a story in The Australian, Snelling withdrew his suit because the National Park Service has relented and granted him his permit. He will be able to collect about 40 fist-sized samples, provided that he makes the data from any analyses freely available.

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Not that anything he collects will matter. “Even if I don’t find the evidence I think I will find, it wouldn’t assault my core beliefs,” Snelling told The Australian. “We already have evidence that is consistent with a great flood that swept the world.”

Again, in actuality, that hypothesis is in conflict with the entirety of Earth’s surface geology.

Snelling says he will publish his results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. That likely means Answers in Genesis’ own Answers Research Journal, of which he is editor-in-chief.

530 Reader Comments

“Even if I don’t find the evidence I think I will find, it wouldn’t assault my core beliefs,” Snelling told The Australian.

And this is where he fails as a Scientist.

Despite his PHD in geology I would put Scientist in quote... "Scientist"

Great point, and to add a bit,

Why isn't that PhD revoked if it is by an accredited institution? Hell, If I was that institution I would be publishing some sort of "Burn Notice" to all courts just in case: This guy is not a scientist.

If it is not by an accredited institution, he should not be called a scientist.

I'm not sure what his thesis was, but by itself it's probably sound. They can repudiate his current blatherings, but I'm not sure if there'd be a basis for an actual defrocking based on the research his degree was originally based on.

“Even if I don’t find the evidence I think I will find, it wouldn’t assault my core beliefs,” Snelling told The Australian.

And this is where he fails as a Scientist.

Despite his PHD in geology I would put Scientist in quote... "Scientist"

Great point, and to add a bit,

Why isn't that PhD revoked if it is by an accredited institution? Hell, If I was that institution I would be publishing some sort of "Burn Notice" to all courts just in case: This guy is not a scientist.

If it is not by an accredited institution, he should not be called a scientist.

While it's not unheard of for universities to revoke degrees, including doctorates, after the fact, that's almost always because evidence came to light that there was something seriously wrong with the work that was done to gain the degree. If he faked the data used in his dissertation or something like that, there'd be grounds for revocation. Turning into a whackaloon sometime after graduation, not so much.

I've got an old, ridiculously smart friend who turned into a Young Earth Creationist. His life didn't turn out the way he wanted it. After gambling away his money in Vegas and attempting suicide, I helped move to Fort Collins. He fell in with a bunch of YECs and...well, I dunno. I stopped talking to him.

Never understood it. The dude was so open to reason and logic before and had always been on the fence over his religious beliefs. We had great arguments going into the night that were always respectful and interesting.

When people go through a rough patch or just feel generally powerless, they tend to need something to fill that hole in their lives, to give them direction and tell them that everything will be all right. Your former friend now has YEC religion for this.

Cults tend to recruit people who are in that mental space, for good reasons.

I had a interesting chat with one of my graduate advisors on whether religious people can make good scientists since they're willing to accept dogmatic faith-based positions. His take was that religious people all have a sphere of knowledge in their brains that's unchallengable. The person never tries to validate the data inside that sphere--they just accept it. And, as long as a person's scientific research doesn't collide with that sphere, they can be good scientists.

I really quite like that description.

In this particular case, it's clear that this person's sphere is directly interfering with his research and as such, he is not capable of being a good scientist.

Most people are indoctrinated into their religion from birth through at least high school. It has been drilled into them every week for years. Very few people can break/think outside of this indoctrination.As a friend says when someone tries to talk to him about religion - There have been over 4,000 religions throughout history. Isn't it convenient that you happened to be born into the ONE, TRUE RELIGION?

Most people are indoctrinated into their religion from birth through at least high school. It has been drilled into them every week for years. Very few people can break/think outside of this indoctrination.

The resistance to change is not only cerebral but also societal. Many people have wrapped their lives up in their adopted/enforced religion and everyone around them reinforces the ideology to the extent that leaving is extremely difficult.

In some cases they can simply walk away with a few bruised feelings, but in extreme cases leaving comes with total family shunning or even death threats from the religious authorities.

The Dark Ages never really went away - they merely receded into certain corners of society and are (willfully) perpetuated generation after generation.

There are places in the mid canyon where you can put one hand on a rock formation that is ~150 million years old and put the other hand on a formation that is 1.5 billion years old. All the layers in between have been eroded away.

If the spiritual world exists (and I believe it does), it isn't susceptible to discovery in the physical world by physical means. One would use their soul or spirit to do that. Science is the wrong discipline to discover facts about the spiritual world. Science is the correct discipline to discover facts about the physical world.

I used to be a literal Christian and YEC, and now I'm not literal nor YEC. Too many contradictions and too much false guilt. The way I see the Bible now is it contains the Word of God, but it has much of Man's thinking in it as well - it is many thousand years old from a wildly different culture and way of thinking and much altered along the way. Present task is to separate the two out and listen to God, and not Man.

Evolution isn't the problem it used to be for me. Ironic thing is, modern European science was started because some of the first scientists wanted to show the glory of God revealed in the Creation's details.

Ya'll are from the pages of la la land in your replies. The scientific method is based in evolution which is just a THEORY. No proof that it ever occurred. In fact it is impossible by its own rules. The scientific method states that it MUST be able to be repeated with the exact same results. There is NOT one pig giving birth to anything EXCEPT ANOTHER PIG. When GOD created the universe He commanded every creation to bear offspring after it's own kind. That is the way it will always be. Even trees bear seed that produces trees of the same kind as the parent tree. It's only when so-called scientists started trying to "improve" a species that there are things like killer bees. These "scientists" are the quacks. Just because you don't believe the Bible's record does not mean you are right. All of the record of our past is His Story.

Go chug another bottle of alter wine, and repost tomorrow morning, when you are semi-coherent before you hit the hair of the dog.

Just because you don't believe the Bible's record does not mean you are right. All of the record of our past is His Story.

Just because you believe the Bible's record does not mean you are right. All of the record of our past is based on the ignorance of the time, His Story.

I should also add that since God created everything, he also created the ignorance you hold on to so dearly.

And one more thing. Why is it that so many religious folks, at least those who seem to be most vocal about being religious, are so hateful and unloving, going completely against the teachings they so cherish? Where in the Bible does it say God approves of you being an asshat just because?

Why? Why can people get away with this crap? Yes! Please, challenge the current scientific thinking, propose new theories, new methods to what we take as established fact. But, then please realize, that when there isn't a grand conspiracy that science has been lying to you this whole time, that your held beliefs are not true.

You know what, screw it, next time I get a ticket, I'm going to court and telling them how physics is using alternative facts to say I was going 85 in a 65. My core belief is that God would naturally stop me from going too fast.

I had a interesting chat with one of my graduate advisors on whether religious people can make good scientists since they're willing to accept dogmatic faith-based positions. His take was that religious people all have a sphere of knowledge in their brains that's unchallengable. The person never tries to validate the data inside that sphere--they just accept it. And, as long as a person's scientific research doesn't collide with that sphere, they can be good scientists.

I really quite like that description.

In this particular case, it's clear that this person's sphere is directly interfering with his research and as such, he is not capable of being a good scientist.

Most people are indoctrinated into their religion from birth through at least high school. It has been drilled into them every week for years. Very few people can break/think outside of this indoctrination.As a friend says when someone tries to talk to him about religion - There have been over 4,000 religions throughout history. Isn't it convenient that you happened to be born into the ONE, TRUE RELIGION?

I was raised Catholic. Went to a Catholic elementary school through 7th grade. I remember getting in trouble asking about Adam and Eve, and if they were the first two people, and their sons were Cane and Abel, then wouldn't Cane and Able have to have sex with their mother to make more people?

Will the Real Dr Snelling Please Stand Up? has a comparison of his earlier work as an actual scientist vs his current fiction.My guess is either he became "born again" for a woman or the money is much better as a charlatan.

Andrew completed a Bachelor of Science degree in applied geology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, graduating with first class honors in 1975. His PhD in geology was awarded in 1982 by The University of Sydney, Australia for his research thesis titled “A Geochemical Study of the Koongarra Uranium Deposit, Northern Territory, Australia.” Between studies and since Andrew worked for six years in the exploration and mining industries in Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory, variously as a field, mine, and research geologist for three different companies.

Andrew commenced in full-time creation ministry at the end of 1983, first working from Brisbane with the Creation Science Foundation of Australia (later Answers in Genesis–Australia) until late 1998, including three years with Ken Ham before Ham moved to the USA. From 1983 to 1992, Snelling was still required to be a geological consultant to the Koongarra uranium project for Denison Australia PL, subsidiary of the Canadian mining giant Denison. He was also involved in research projects with several Australian CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organization) scientists, and for more than ten years in a major international collaborative research effort, funded by the US Department of Energy, with ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization) and university scientists across Australia, and with university and government scientists from the USA, Britain, Japan, Korea , Sweden, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to investigate the Koongarra uranium deposit as a natural analog of a nuclear waste disposal site. As a result of these research endeavors, Andrew was involved in writing numerous scientific reports, and scientific papers that were published in international science journals and books.

In late 1998 Andrew joined the Institute for Creation Research (then near San Diego, CA), as professor of geology. His responsibilities included teaching master’s degree geology courses in ICR’s Graduate School; leading tours to the Grand Canyon, England, Yosemite, and Death Valley; and research and writing projects.

FWIW, he's not stupid. And I'm not even convinced he's doing this for money. My guess is you can make more money as a geological consultant for the mining industry than as a creationist geology professor.

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." - Randall Munroe

The point of a PhD in science, and science in general is that you follow where the evidence points. Sometimes you have to interpret the evidence, and sometimes your interpretation is wrong, or the methodology you used to get the data or theory is wrong and you end up going down the wrong path. But once the evidence shows you that you've gone in the wrong direction, it's time to stop and reconsider. The point of science is to always be open minded to every possibility, and to be able to say you were wrong or mistaken.

I had a interesting chat with one of my graduate advisors on whether religious people can make good scientists since they're willing to accept dogmatic faith-based positions. His take was that religious people all have a sphere of knowledge in their brains that's unchallengable. The person never tries to validate the data inside that sphere--they just accept it. And, as long as a person's scientific research doesn't collide with that sphere, they can be good scientists.

I really quite like that description.

In this particular case, it's clear that this person's sphere is directly interfering with his research and as such, he is not capable of being a good scientist.

Most people are indoctrinated into their religion from birth through at least high school. It has been drilled into them every week for years. Very few people can break/think outside of this indoctrination.As a friend says when someone tries to talk to him about religion - There have been over 4,000 religions throughout history. Isn't it convenient that you happened to be born into the ONE, TRUE RELIGION?

I was raised Catholic. Went to a Catholic elementary school through 7th grade. I remember getting in trouble asking about Adam and Eve, and if they were the first two people, and their sons were Cane and Abel, then wouldn't Cane and Able have to have sex with their mother to make more people?

You had a pretty poor teacher then, it's reasonably easy to "explain" whilst following the bible's account.

Adam and Eve had a lot of children and lived to be around ~900 years old. The rules around incest were not established by God until later in the bible and there would be no significant issues with such relationships at the time since Adam and Eve would have had no genetic problems to pass on.

Note that I don't actually believe any of that though, I was just also raised Catholic and heard the 3,000 logical sounding justifications for various parts of the bible

If the spiritual world exists (and I believe it does), it isn't susceptible to discovery in the physical world by physical means. One would use their soul or spirit to do that. Science is the wrong discipline to discover facts about the spiritual world. Science is the correct discipline to discover facts about the physical world.

I used to be a literal Christian and YEC, and now I'm not literal nor YEC. Too many contradictions and too much false guilt. The way I see the Bible now is it contains the Word of God, but it has much of Man's thinking in it as well - it is many thousand years old from a wildly different culture and way of thinking and much altered along the way. Present task is to separate the two out and listen to God, and not Man.

Evolution isn't the problem it used to be for me. Ironic thing is, modern European science was started because some of the first scientists wanted to show the glory of God revealed in the Creation's details.

I would agree with that, and I'm a physicist, empiricist, and fan of the scientific method. If there really is a god, goddess, or pantheon of deities out there, and they're actually infinitely powerful etc., then they're beyond the laws of this universe and science couldn't hope to say anything about them one way or the other since it is firmly rooted in what is and is not within this universe. Newton's Flaming Laser Sword (a.k.a. Alder's Razor) says "what cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating." The way religions describe their gods, there may be (at least there hasn't yet been) no experiment or theory capable of proving or disproving the existence of a god. Which to me means that as a scientist, I can't have a strong opinion on the existence or non-existence of a god. I guess I can use my personal experience to say which I think is more likely, but without any evidence I think it would be folly for me to say definitively. Of course, this is all my opinion, so I'm open to other interpretations or rebuttals if people think I'm wrong!

Also, I've always sort of wondered why evolution and co. are such an issue for some religious people. If a god created everything, why couldn't they have created rules which govern how things work? If I were a god, I feel like I'd probably create a system very similar to evolution just to keep things interesting. I can't fathom the mind of a god, but surely staring at the exact same creatures for billions of years would be absurdly boring. But the finesse of designing a system like evolution? That might be pretty satisfying - well, to a human anyways. Or maybe I'm the only one that thinks that would be fun.

This case is kind of interesting in that it is a lot harder to be a religious and scientific nutcase in Australia than in the US. There are enough of them ( former PM Abbott for one ) but it's not common.